A Walk Through the Fire

Rating:
Summary: A Walk through the Fire
Review: "A Walk through the Fire" is the 20th Sharon McCone novel. ...I think this is one of the best of the Sharon McCone novels. Glenna Stanleigh, a friend of McCone's, is filming a documentary on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. It appears that someone is trying to sabotage the project and Glenna fears that someone is trying to kill her. She asks McCone to come to Hawaii and investigate. She and her lover, Hy Ripinsky, go to Hawaii. Glenna's project focuses on the Wellbright family, a wealthy family with quite a few dark secrets. Sharon almost becomes involved with helicopter pilot Russ Tanner, and her relationship with Hy is put to the test. This is a different kind of McCone novel. I did miss the San Francisco crew, but all in all I thought this was an excellent novel.

Rating:
Summary: Amateurish
Review: Amateurish, stiff, thin, contrived--these are the adjectives I can think of to describe the novel best. Although I might add one more: disappointing. This is my first Marcia Muller mystery, and I expected more from a seasoned writer--too much, as it turned out. After reading Steve Hamilton, Bill Pronzini, Andrew Greeley, Tony Hillerman, Stuart Kaminsky, Les Roberts, and others of that level, this seems stale as yesterday's gruel.

There's no point in reviewing the plot details. Other reviewers have commented adequately on those. So I'll proceed to the other two major points of any mystery--atmosphere and characters. Set in Hawaii, for the most part, I just never quite got there, despite all the green vegetation, flowers and fiery volcanoes. Beautiful, beautiful, so what? The characters are pretty much standard fare for mysteries--too rich, too spoiled, too much alcohol and drugs. As for love affairs, mystery writers might do well to heed S.S. Van Dine's rule from decades ago and leave sex out of the work. If the mystery is thin, the romance won't thicken it. The murder and the detection are, after all, why we read crime fiction. If I want romance, I'll go with Bertrice Small.

In short, I doubt that I'll try another Marcia Muller book, at least, not for a long, long time. Sorry.

Rating:
Summary: Amateurish
Review: Amateurish, stiff, thin, contrived--these are the adjectives I can think of to describe the novel best. Although I might add one more: disappointing. This is my first Marcia Muller mystery, and I expected more from a seasoned writer--too much, as it turned out. After reading Steve Hamilton, Bill Pronzini, Andrew Greeley, Tony Hillerman, Stuart Kaminsky, Les Roberts, and others of that level, this seems stale as yesterday's gruel.

There's no point in reviewing the plot details. Other reviewers have commented adequately on those. So I'll proceed to the other two major points of any mystery--atmosphere and characters. Set in Hawaii, for the most part, I just never quite got there, despite all the green vegetation, flowers and fiery volcanoes. Beautiful, beautiful, so what? The characters are pretty much standard fare for mysteries--too rich, too spoiled, too much alcohol and drugs. As for love affairs, mystery writers might do well to heed S.S. Van Dine's rule from decades ago and leave sex out of the work. If the mystery is thin, the romance won't thicken it. The murder and the detection are, after all, why we read crime fiction. If I want romance, I'll go with Bertrice Small.

In short, I doubt that I'll try another Marcia Muller book, at least, not for a long, long time. Sorry.

Rating:
Summary: A let-down
Review: I have read all of Marcia Muller's books and this one was certainly a let down. During the past 2 weeks I got Listen to the Silence, Both Ends of the Night and this one out of the library. The other 2 were great - I devoured them, but I couldn't get past page 50 of this one. Will return it to the library unfinished today. Thank goodness I am aware of Muller's REAL potential and don't have to judge her by this book.

Rating:
Summary: was Hy too noble?
Review: I have to admit never having read any of the other Sharon McCone series, nor have I read anything else by Marcia Muller (if indeed there is anything else). But I do enjoy detective fiction as entertaining reading, and I'm certainly not adverse to female detectives, thoroughly enjoying PI's from V.I. Warshawski to Stephanie Plum.

So apart from the expected issues of coming in late in a long-established series (the newcomer can't expect all the characterisation to start from scratch, and relationships and other details are often simply glossed to avoid boring the long-time followers) I had every reason to expect to enjoy this book. A writer doesn't often manage to get to a twenty-second book in a series without being reasonably articulate and entertaining (although Don Pendelton and the Mack Bolan series is definitely proof that this is a very fallible assumption). I'm sorry to report that while McCone and Miller are indeed reasonably articulate, they are certainly not (in this novel) exceptionally entertaining. Plot and characteristation were workmanlike at best, and there simply wasn't a lot here to hold the reader's attention. Miller seemed to be counting on the exotic locale of Hawaii to overcome the mundane story; but the 50th state is hardly exotic anymore to those of us who grew up on Hawaii Five-0 and it's followers. The romantic side-story never quite came together, either. McCone is supposed to be torn between her main squeeze and a handsome helicopter pilot, but we have no understanding about what the big attraction is to the new guy. Miller seems to prefer understatement--and it's just as well that there's no torrid sex in this novel--but A Walk Through the Fire is so understated that it failed almost entirely to interest me.

Rating:
Summary: Unexpected weak effort from Muller
Review: I'm a fan of Marcia Muller going back many years, but this installment in the Sharon McCone series was a disappointment. Not that all good authors can't stumble occasionally. A Walk Through the Fire was tepid and just plain boring most of the time. It didn't really even seem that Sharon was the same character we've been following for so long. The demands of turning out a top notch mystery year in year out must surely take a toll on any author. But we are all hoping Muller merely slipped a bit on this one and that the next installment will be back on track.

Rating:
Summary: Muller's plotting is getting tired, but still like her books
Review: Most of the other reviewers have said what needs to be said concerning this book. It's a good read for the beach, yet that in itself is a bit of criticism because most fine authors want to be better than that (I would think). This genre is supposed to be entertaining, and this book is exactly that. No less worthy of spending your time then sitting in front of the boob-tube for hours at a time!

It's hard, I'm sure, to continue writing about a single protagonist all the time. And it's difficult to ask readers to suspend belief over certain things happening constantly to one person (though I can testify that bad things do happen constantly to good persons). Not enough effort put into the plot, and newcomers to Muller's books usually get a better introduction into the characters, and so the characters seem rather cardboardish at this point.

Karen Sadler

Rating:
Summary: Sharon McCone goes to Kauai
Review: Private Investigator Sharon McCone gets tough duty in this 20th. book of the series when she is asked to go to Kauai. Glenna Stanleigh, a friend from San Francisco, has asked Sharon to investigate the strange happenings on the set of the documentary she is filming in Hawaii. Sharon takes the job and flies over with her significant other, Hy Ripinsky. When she arrives, she begins investigating the family whose patriarch is at the center of the film. Glenna has used his notes and research about some of the folk tales of the native Hawaiins as a starting point for her documentary. As Sharon's investigation proceeds, several skeletons begin to come out of the closet and family secrets are revealed. At the same time, Sharon is being romanced by a local helicoptor pilot and Hy leaves the island in order to give Sharon some time and room to consider her relationships with the two men. The plot has some intriguing twists and turns and at last all of the secrets are revealed. Marcia Muller and her heroine have matured over the 20-plus years that this series has been written, and this book does not disappoint.

Rating:
Summary: Sharon McCone goes to Kauai
Review: Private Investigator Sharon McCone gets tough duty in this 20th. book of the series when she is asked to go to Kauai. Glenna Stanleigh, a friend from San Francisco, has asked Sharon to investigate the strange happenings on the set of the documentary she is filming in Hawaii. Sharon takes the job and flies over with her significant other, Hy Ripinsky. When she arrives, she begins investigating the family whose patriarch is at the center of the film. Glenna has used his notes and research about some of the folk tales of the native Hawaiins as a starting point for her documentary. As Sharon's investigation proceeds, several skeletons begin to come out of the closet and family secrets are revealed. At the same time, Sharon is being romanced by a local helicoptor pilot and Hy leaves the island in order to give Sharon some time and room to consider her relationships with the two men. The plot has some intriguing twists and turns and at last all of the secrets are revealed. Marcia Muller and her heroine have matured over the 20-plus years that this series has been written, and this book does not disappoint.

Rating:
Summary: More Like A Walk Through Boredom
Review: Someone's trying to sabotage the making of a documentary. I thought it might be interesting. I'm sorry, I was wrong. Unfortunately, the book was downright predictable. In some areas, it was just plain contradictory. The characters lacked depth and the plot was extremely weak. When you see this book on the shelf, just keep walking.